Media reports suggested Mateen was also in touch with Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a US marine who became a jihadi preacher transitioning through a variety of intermediate phases.

Sitora Yusufiy, who was briefly married to Mateen, said in multiple interviews they met in 2009 on a dating site. She moved to Florida to be with him and they married shortly after.

Yusufiy, who said she migrated to the US from Uzbekistan in 2000, noticed Mateen’s erratic behaviour within six weeks of their marriage. He began beating her and took away her pay cheques.

Their marriage lasted a few months. “He was not a stable person,” she told The Washington Post. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”

Otherwise, Mateen “seemed like a normal human being”, Yusufiy has said, adding he didn’t seem very religious and preferred to spend his spare time working out in a gym.

After his divorce from Yusufiy in 2011, Mateen is understood to have married again – this time he had a son – but this relationship ended in divorce too. No details were available.

Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, who is a prolific broadcaster on local community TV network, one of zillions in every neighbourhood, has said his son is a homophobe.

He was angered, the senior Mateen claimed, by the sight of two men kissing in Miami a few months ago. Angered enough to cause the death of 49 people?